The Vector Theory Of Moral

At present, the issue of moral development has become the major concern of the public. Based on the issue, the author, in the current paper, proposes the concept of moral vector while speculating upon the question: why most of the elected national moral models are less educated people from lower middle class yet, why almost no relevance can be observed between the educational level of the mass and the moral condition of the society as described in the mid-19th-century England by Spencer in his "Social Statics". In addition, with the proposing of the concept, an in-depth discussion on the personality vector and the environment vector as well as the mechanism of action between the two has been conducted by the author.Among the various factors of the formation of morality, force and direction are two of them, which resembles the concept of vector in physics, hence"moral vector". The so-called force of moral vector is the moral force in the formation of a particular kind of morality and, the direction of moral vector, being the nature of the moral formulation, has the potential to decide which direction morality aims at, either malicious or benevolent. The vector aforementioned follows the parallelogram rule; therefore, the composition of moral vector produced on account of it is still a vector. Consequently, moral behavior is conducted by human beings as a result of"the composition of moral vector"formulated through interactions between vectors. The moral behavior of a particular individual is directly related to the force and direction of the composition of the moral vector rather than the degree of moral education one has received, which can further account for certain related problems. The primary connotation of the moral vector theory is that the formation of morality is an integration of the systematic function, mechanism function, dynamic function and synchronic role of the various factors of morality, the idea in which has received support from philosophy, psychology, sociology and pedagogy, etc.Morality vector can be divided into two broad categories: one is personality vector; the other is environment vector. Personality vector which involves personality factor in the generation of the morality is the most basic vector. Its fundamental status is reflected in that the starting-point, the foothold and the whole running process are closely related to personality. One essential property of personality is holoscopicity, which mainly refers to the individual personality information that contains the embryo of personality information of mankind. Without forming any specific personality appearance, the primary personality has the possibility of developing in every direction with equal strength, so its addition is zero. However, influenced by the environment, the process of personality development is brimming with variables and thus each unique person is formed. Personality vector is relatively stable. Only if there is more powerful external force, can the former personality vector be replaced by the new one. Also this means that it will become more and more difficult to change the personality vector.Environment vector refers to environmental factors that affect and influence specific individuals. According to materialism, morality environment plays a decisive role in the formation of morality. Although personality is contained with possibilities of various moralities, morality must be manifested by the involvement of morality environment, by which the morality environment, as the primacy of matter, shows its extreme significance. Environment vector has two principles: one is Maximum Environment Principle, that all environment are likely to have vector effects on morality; the other is Closest Environment Principle, that the more relevant the environment is with the individual morality, the more notable the influence can be. These two environment vector principles enlighten us in that we should not only pay attention to the construction of the overall environment, but also to the development of the specific environment.The moral system is in essence the result of the interplay of personality vector and environment vector. An individual's moral system is a dissipative structure which relies on the information input from the outside, processes the information effectively and takes it into an internal order. The personality vector is the carrier of the interplay while the environment vector as the external input interacts with the personality vector. Any intervention of the environment vector will cause a fluctuation on the stability of personality vector. When the personality structure is in a stable state, its system can eliminate small fluctuations. However, when the personality structure is in an unstable state, the increase or decrease of any environment vector, namely the fluctuation or disturbulance in the system, will result in huge impact on the final moral vector and moral behaviour. In general, the personality vector stays in an unstable state just temporarily, always inclining toward a stable state, so the study of such unstable moral state is extremely valuable. In this paper, the issue of moral ambiguity has been explored in great detail. Almost all moral behaviour are of ambiguity nature. Even if "moral ambiguity" is not an ideal moral state, it must be noted that it is a necessary part and element for the transformation of moral. At the same time, moral ambiguity is of sensitivity on the moral effect which is a critical period for moral intervention. The transformation of moral ambiguity can be realized by the changes of moral vector.The theory of moral vector can shed light on moral education. Moral education must first establish the concept that everyone will become a moral person, because from "the holographic personality" point of view, we all have an ever-growing holographic personality that has a potential to develop in all directions within the framework of the class as a result of the environment and initiative of our own personality. Concerning the mechanism of moral vector, the aim of moral education is in the hope that the educated will obtain a certain relatively stable personality structure in their ideology, that is the dissipative structure. To achieve this goal, we are suppose to conform to the laws of dissipative structure, to follow the principle of open selective choosing, reasonableobjective principle, thorough-theory principle, efficiency principle and so on. As for the methods and strategies in moral education, researchers need to go into the real lives of the educated mass, correctly recognize and actively intervene the critical period of one's moral development, comprehensibly improve their moral system that contains the personality and environment vector.